Blue murder

“Do you mean,” Sader said, “that you abandoned him? That none of you offered him a home? you left him there in that condemned house with an old woman who hadn’t even been paid for keeping him? With nothing to eat?” From the LOA website: Private eye Jim Sader returns in this hard-hitting thriller. A hunt for a kidnapped boy leads through a labyrinth of well-hidden family secrets into the heart of an elaborate and malevolent deception. With little to go on—a tightlipped client, an anonymous letter, a mother who is supposed to be dead—Sader must rely on his wits to find the child even as he outraces the personal demons that dog him. Sleep with Slander is a masterpiece in the classic hardboiled tradition, tough, compassionate, and tautly told.

No Good From a Corpse offers hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive, who gets involved with a dead girl, and suspects every one of her boyfriends--an ex-husband, a playboy, a blackmailer and a brute. There's a woman suspect as well, and a long chase through Sunset Strip.